Coal Does Not A Fire Make
by I Can Kill You With My Brain
Summary: Because in a world of too-loud people and too-bright colors, she just keeps waiting for a moment that never comes and now she knows how Atlas felt. Lisbon AU.


**Coal Does Not A Fire Make**

Born in Chicago, she grows used to drabness and cold and _wet_ before her mind and mouth find the bridge connecting them and her words fill up the world.

Her memories of childhood are categorized into Before and After; an organization system that appeals to her sense of correct-place-for-everything-everyone.

Before is blurred recollections of gray skies and parks with brown grass and ice cream cones that don't melt because it's too cold but hey, it's sweet and coats her mouth and her mom laughs and wipes it away with a white napkin.

After is a house that just _won't stay clean_. No matter how many times she dusts and vacuums and threatens bodily harm to her brothers because if they even _think_ about putting those dishes anywhere but the dish washer one more time so help her _god _ there will be blood, dust collects into mounds and the walls have stains and walking through the living room in bare feet is asking for glass cuts.

She sighs and tries a little harder; flowers in a vase on the table, a blanket for her father, buying that new toy for Tommy because he really wanted it and his smile was worth it and she doesn't really need a new pair of shoes anyways.

Her father doesn't notice and her brothers tell her not to nag and her teachers compliment her work but ask if she's sleeping enough and her friends, well, who needs friends anyway?

Life is about trade-offs and distinguishing _want_ from _need_, and by the time she hits eighteen she prides herself on knowing the difference. She puts her brothers through school one by one, and if they don't want to go to college then that's fine because she has her sights set on California and she doesn't want to deal with them anymore.

Duty she has in abundance, but she's running a bit short on things like 'patience' and 'like', and love? She's their sister not their mother, and although they don't really know the difference and she forgets now and again, too bad so sad someone else can vacuum and dust and put flowers on the table because she is _gone_.

California is the same but different; the people are louder and the colors are brighter and _why is everyone so goddamn cheerful?!_

The sun, would be her answer. Big and burning and now she understands why people draw suns with a smile. Five months in she's lost her perpetual sunburn from too much time spent out-of-doors (_think about cancer_, the doctors caution, and she laughs in their faces; life is a war and if the enemy is throwing presents then she'll worry about them blowing up when she can hear the ticking and see the wires) and gained a tan and she blends in just a bit more.

Being the novelty, the shiny new toy who's still awed by all the things the Golden State has to offer, slowly [rapidly] loses it's appeal, and she goes back to being that little shadow in the background that no one sees and no one cares about and it's both sad and comforting that things have changed so little.

At least she has the sun, and a swept-clean floor, and no little brothers running around screaming. The cheap wine probably helped too.

Graduation passes in a blur and she's a cop and hey look, isn't that the killer?

She's made a name for herself, graduated to being a good little homicide detective. She's made friends, and colleagues, and to be honest with herself more than her fair share of enemies. There might be less, except for the fact that so many of them equate her being _short _with her being _stupid,_ and sometimes she can't resist wiping the condescending smirks off of their faces.

O.o.O

Her expression is smooth and her clothes are somber and she exists in the peripheral and the in-between.

O.o.O

She comes home and sits on her couch; a cup of tea, a good book, and she puts the TV on for background noise. Silly, but she's never been able to shake that childhood thought that safe means daddy's occupied, and besides she's too old to change now.

There's a show on that she doesn't recognize; some 'psychic' communing with the dead. She takes in his blond curls, his charming smile, the guileless blue eyes._ Trickster_, she thinks, and flips channels until she finds some mind-numbing reality show, the kind with lots of people talking and talking and not really saying anything for hours on end. Like life, she thinks bitterly, and then edits.

Not life perhaps so much as _her_ life. But that's okay. Living life in the shadows may not be the most exciting thing she's ever done, but the view is interesting and the pay is nice and she doesn't really care. Going through the motions and practice makes perfect and at least California has sun.

O.o.O

Two days later and the office is in uproar and people are yelling and Sam is saying _coffee, we need coffee, how the hell do they expect us to work with no sleep _and_ no caffeine? They can come down here themselves and hey watch where you're putting that that's evidence!_

Another murder in a series of murders, and it's probably the no-caffeine-no-sleep thing talking but she's looks at the pictures until they blur in front of her eyes and all she can think is that that is a really well-drawn smiley face; my god, did he trace it? Although this coming from the girl who can't draw a straight line is probably like giving Michelangelo first-gen computer technology and saying 'this is high-tech'.

Two minutes later someone's telling her all about Patrick Jane and how he _taunted_ this guy on public television and seriously what did he think was going to happen? He was basically asking for it!

Privately, she disagrees; this guy was going to kill someone and if some poor fool put themself in the firing line then they deserve pity, not scorn.

As it turns out, the 'trickster' fellow she'd seen on television had flaunted his pseudo-skills in front of one too many cameras and she watches footage of the crime scene and plays over and over again the expression on his once-charming-now-shattered face.

The smile's gone from his face; it's up on the wall.

More coffee and a trip to the roof to assure herself that there is at least one nice thing still left in the god-forsaken world and she's back up to her elbows digging through the evidence and asking if anyone wanted tea, the coffee was giving her a migraine.

By the time Patrick Jane comes wandering into the police station months have passed and the case is a box somewhere in the Unsolved room and she is in a really, _really_ bad mood because some idiot thought that short-meant-stupid-and-he-isn't-laughing-now.

She takes one look at the man and calls over another officer and that's the last she sees of him.

O.o.O

In a world of too-fast people and too-bright colors, sometimes she feels that life has passed her by; like there is nothing more to her personal existence than to be a small, dark shadow in the background. Cute, people call her; pretty, if they want to be nice. But never _beautiful_; never _striking_.

A feeling, never articulated, that hangs on her shoulders like a weight, heavy folds of expectation and reality that only smell like promise. She knows now what it is like to be Atlas.

Shade after shade after _shade_ of gray. Black, white, the occasional navy. Never red. Never pink. Never yellow. She may kill herself if it never ends; it never does but that's okay, because some things are only metaphorical and truth be told you have to live to die.

Never married, no children. She's been a mother, or at least a poor excuse for one, and if her brother-children don't write or call that's one more thing she can cross off her to-do list.

A good cop, an _honest_ cop. One you can count on to have your back.

She's not a rising star, or a blazing comet of fire and light; she's not even the moon or the ashes of a fire gone out, because to be ash you have to burn.

A lump of coal, maybe; all the promise to be fire or diamond, whichever came first, but never completed. All potential energy, but nothing that will send her twisting and careening into kinetic (god, she's always wanted to be a fireworks display but no one's ever lit the match made the push took a chance and that's the world for you).

She lives her life and does her duty and retires in a small house with a cat and a book and a cup of tea and the sound of the TV as background noise, and all the while she's still waiting for that one moment that feels like it should have happened but never did.

O.o.O

_L'appel du vide_ is French for 'the call of the void'; _ennui_ means 'a lack of spirit, enthusiasm, or interest'; all her therapists say _depression_ and 'this pill is really a miracle'.

She knows the truth.

Sometimes a thing stops before it starts, and if science can't explain it, then good luck trying to light a fire because all the pressure in the world won't turn a coal to diamond if the coal isn't really coal but a metaphor for a life un-lived.

**A/N: A prompt that my sister and I both wrote to; her penname is 2x2 Hands of blue and that's probably why they have the same 'too-loud too-bright' passage. Hers is posted as well. **

**Yes, I am aware that coal isn't really turned into diamonds so much as the **_**carbon**_** and thus my metaphor isn't true. I'm using poetic license; if you want to write a review trashing it then just PM me and save other people the headache.**

**I also apologize for people living in Chicago; I'm sure it's not as bad as I made it sound. I just enjoy making my characters suffer, and ignore reality when it gets in my way.**


End file.
